This summer, our FREEPSY researchers, Prof Raluca Soreanu and Dr Ana Minozzo took part in the International Society of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (SIPP-ISPP) conference which took place in Nicosia, Cyprus.
As with each of SIPP’s international conferences, there was one guiding theme for the event: ‘Limits, Frontiers, Rims and Borders’. It was approached in a plurality of ways by analysts, researchers, scholars and practitioners of different fields and orientations with a commitment to thinking of the intersections of philosophy and psychoanalysis. Reflecting SIPP’s international and bi-lingual foundation – primarily in French and English – the event gathered colleagues from Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Ireland, Ecuador, United States, Sweden, Austria, France, Italy and beyond. Representing the UK and Essex were our FREEPSY researchers and Professor Sanja Bahun, from the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies. One exciting characteristic of SIPP events is that they gather well-known voices of our field, such as Patricia Gherovici, Monique David-Menard and Jamieson Webster, to name but a few, and younger researchers or independent clinicians, totalling over fifty presentations across three packed days. The level of discussions is uniquely high, reflecting SIPP’s commitment to producing dialogues, publishing and organising a range of ongoing activities beyond the conferences. The ongoing-ness of these events also allows for a true sense of intellectual community to be formed, a sense, such that vibrates during the periodical encounters in person.
Gathered in Cyprus this time, we were welcomed by our hosts at the University of Nicosia, Dr Yianna Ioannou and Dr. Marinos Pourgouris, as well as their superb team of organisers, for nothing short of a treat. Nicosia, a divided city marked by war, conflict and traumatic resonances, revealed itself to be an interesting ground for the conference on ‘borders’ – material, immaterial, external and internal, all at once. In fact, we were lucky to be able to join a panel dealing specifically with the manifestations of trauma in Cyprus, which was one of the most touching moments of the event, Dr Ioannou’s paper, in particular, mixing clinical material, theory and personal accounts, was a superb example of intellectual work which also generated an emotional response in the audience.
Raluca Soreanu’s paper ‘On Elasticity and Clinical Ecologies in Psychoanalysis’ was very well received by our colleagues and her elaboration on the idea of ‘clinical ecologies’, in particular, resonated with interests of several other colleagues. Ana Minozzo’s paper ‘Psychoanalysis as 1-more and not-it-all: Porosity, entanglement and borders/the case of Free Clinics’ was also very well received, generating a potent dialogue about psychoanalytic gatekeeping and creativity. Both papers reflected data gathered on fieldwork research conducted jointly by Raluca and Ana earlier this year in Brazil at one of our research sites. During the event, we had a chance to meet colleagues from our other research sites such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, strengthening our bonds within our community.
You can connect with SIPP on their website, and watch out for new events and Call For Papers.
